Gibson 1961 Les Paul SG Guitars: Gibson experienced a huge fall in electric guitar sales mainly because of their high prices and huge competition from Fender’s equivalent but much lighter double-cutaway design in 1960 on The Stratocaster Guitar. Gibson then made changes to the infamous guitar line. The 1961 guitar was thinner and much lighter than the previous guitars, with two sharply pointed cut-aways and vibrato system. Nevertheless, the revamp was done without Les Paul’s knowledge…ooops. The musician saw the guitar, he gasped, and he asked Gibson to remove his name from the guitar and he said goodbye to Gibson. Even though this separation happened in 1960, Gibson had a huge stock of Les Paul logos and truss rod covers, and so they continued to use the Les Paul name until about 1963. That is when the SG guitar’s name was finally altered to SG, which stands for Solid Guitar. Plus the SG line, Gibson continued to issue the less expensive Les Paul Jr’s and Les Paul Specials (and the Melody Makers) with the newer body style. These were the standard Gibson electric models until the reintroduction of the Les Paul Standard Goldtop and the Les Paul Custom guitars to the market in 1968.

Gibson Les Paul Recording Guitar: This guitar is often shunned by guitar purists who consider it to be too full of gadgets and buttons. The Recording features low-impedance pickups, many switches and buttons, and a highly specialized cable for impedance-matching to the amplifier. Less noticeable changes included, but were not limited to, maple fingerboards (1976), pickup cavity shielding, and the crossover of the ABR1 Tune-o-matic bridge into the modern day Nashville Tune-o-matic bridge.

Gibson Les Paul Deluxe Guitars: The Les Paul Deluxe was in the midst of the newest 1968 Les Pauls. This guitar featured “mini-humbuckers”, also known as “New York” humbuckers, and did not at first demonstrate to be very popular. The mini-humbucker pickup fit in to the precarved P-90 pickup cavity having an adaptor ring developed by Gibson, actually just a cutout P90 pickup cover, in order to use a supply of Epiphone mini-humbuckers left over from when Gibson moved Epiphone production to Japan. The Deluxe was introduced in 1968 and helped to normalize production among Gibson’s USA built Les Paul guitars. The 1st materialization of the Deluxe featured a one-piece body and three-piece neck. The body was a thin layer of maple sandwiched by two layers of Honduran mahogany. Later a small volute was added. 1969 Les Paul Deluxe’s mark the Gibson logo devoid of the dot over the “i” in Gibson. In 1970 the dot over the i had returned, with a new Made in USA stamp on the back of the headstock. By 1975, the neck construction was changed from mahogany to maple, until the early 1980s, when the production was returned to mahogany. Vintage, new and used Gibson Les Paul Guitars can be purchased on sale and a great bargain can be had online.

Gibson Les Paul Studio: In 1983 The Les Paul Studio guitar was introduced and is still being made today. The planned market for this guitar was the professional studio musician. Consequently, the design features of the Studio were for optimal sound output. This guitar kept only the elements that added to the tone and playability, together with the carved maple top and standard mechanical and electronic hardware. Nonetheless, the Studio design left out many stock Gibson decorations that did not affect sound quality, including the binding on the body and neck. A notable exemption to this is the Studio Custom, a guitar in the mid 1980s that incorporated body and neck binding, though with dot fingerboard inlays instead of more ornate trapezoids.

Gibson Les Paul Robot Guitar: The Gibson Les Paul Robot Guitar was released in December 2007. The guitar has a computer built into the guitar body with a master control knob next to the volume knobs, which can be pulled out, turned, or pressed to issue different commands to the guitar. One of the more memorable features is the capability to tune the guitar to standard tuning simply by pulling out on the master control knob and strumming the guitar, while the tuning pegs amazingly adjust themselves to standard tuning. Another use of the master control knob is to be able to tune the guitar to alternative tunings, such as drop D, by pressing on the control knob to fit the setting. The Les Paul Robot Guitar has a new custom silverburst blue finish. While the guitar was advertised in the American as a world’s first, similar systems, some external, have been in use for decades.

Gibson Les Paul Dark Fire Guitars: Just recently on December 15, 2008 Gibson publicized a new interactive computerized guitar that produces more sounds and it is named the Dark Fire. The guitar has a computer built into the body and controlled by the Master Control Knob or also called the MCK. The MCK gives guitar players the skill to change the pickups and coils, fine-tune each tone and tunings automatically and at once, even while a song is being played. Similar to the Robot Guitar, the Dark Fire Guitar features the capability to tune the guitar, nonetheless, enhanced over the Robot Guitar, the player can tune it up to 500 times per battery charge, letting the tuning pegs adjust themselves to different tuning styles. Using the Chameleon Tone Technology Gibson says this guitar will produce every imaginable guitar sound. In addition to the enhanced and advanced tuning features, the guitar has 3 various types of pickups, which includes: Burstbucker (humbucker), a P-90 single-coil and a bridge-mounted piezo acoustic–all of which add to organic blends of original sounds.

http://music-memorabilia-posters.com/ Vintage, new and used Gibson Les Paul Guitars can be purchased on sale and a great bargain can be had online.

By Joshua Dylan

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Always dressed to the nines, not a hair out of place, perfect make up and lipstick – and painted finger nails….long painted finger nails!

Have you ever watched Dolly play guitar? If so, have you wondered how she can sit down with a guitar and play it without those long, claw-like finger nails getting in the way?

Sure, it’s possible to play guitar with long finger nails, classical guitarists do it all the time. But with Dolly, we’re talking about daggers, nails that can do some real damage!

For her it’s simple. She plays with one finger.

Sounds impossible to those of us who struggle to contort our fingers into all shapes imaginable to form complex guitar chords, but for her it’s easy.

She does it by tuning her guitar to an open chord. Quite often hers is tuned to an open E chord.

By tuning the guitar to an open chord she can strum it without any fingers on it, and be playing a full chord – in this case, an E.

Then by placing one finger across any fret and barring those notes, she is playing another full chord.

Let’s look first at how to tune your guitar to an open E tuning.

6th string (E) – leave it as it is normally

5th string (A) – tune this string up to a B. Do this by playing the note on the 7th fret of the 6th string, and tuning up the 5th string to match it

4th string (D) – tune this string up to an E. Do this by playing either the 6th string, or 1st string, and tuning the 4th string to match it. In this case the 4th string will now become an “octave” of the 1st or 6th strin3rd string (G) – tune this string up to a G#. Do this by playing the note on the 4th fret of the 4th string (after this one has already been tuned higher), and matching the 3rd string to it

2nd string (B) – leave it as it is normally

1st string (E) – leave it as it is normally

Now strum all 6 strings of the guitar. You are now playing an open E chord!

Want to play an A chord in this tuning? Just lay your 1st finger across all the strings on the 5th fret and strum.

Want to play a G chord? Simply barre the strings across the 3rd fret.

If you know the notes on the 6th string, then the note on the 6th string at the fret where your finger is making the barre is the root note for the chord you are playing.

One word of caution. When tuning strings up to a higher pitch, you are adding more tension to them and they can sometimes break if you go too high. Always turn your head away from the guitar when tuning up higher than normal, to prevent a snapping string from striking your face or eyes.

When in this tuning, have a little fun and play around with forming chords and discovering new ones.

Here’s a hint. In this open E tuning, form an open E chord just like you would in standard tuning and play it. Then lift your fingers off and strum the open strings. Do this back and forth a few times, starting with the open strings chord, then going to the E “shape” chord.

Can you recognize the opening chords for the intro to “She Talks To Angels” by the Black Crowes?

Open E tuning is also used quite a bit for slide guitar as well as Dobro.

I have said before that there are times for all of us that our playing gets a little stale. We feel as though we are not playing anything new, like we’re stuck in a rut.

It’s times like these when it can be good for the psyche to shake things up a bit, to do something different and off the cuff.

Next time you feel that way, try switching to an open E tuning and let your creative juices flow!

For Free Video Guitar Lessons designed for Active Adults go to http://adultguitarlessons.com/blog/?page_id=191

By Keith Dean

Keith Dean is founder of AdultGuitarLessons.com and a 30 veteran of stage and studio. He toured extensively as a road musician throughout the US and Europe, was a former lead guitarist for Jason Aldean, and has shared stages with Little Big Town, Wild Rose, Winger, Confederate Railroad and more. He is a published songwriter, owned and operated a successful music store, and has instructed numerous students in guitar. He is a Platinum Level Expert Author on EzineArticles.

Visit http://www.adultguitarlessons.com

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On the guitar we don’t have visual clues like we have on the piano so we need to know the names of the notes that are on the guitar and then work out our own formulas for finding and remembering the notes we need.

The notes are A, B, C, D, E, F, G. The six strings on the guitar sound the notes E, A, D, G, B, E. So we have seven notes on six strings. The most obvious way to learn the locations of the notes on the guitar is to count from each of the notes on the open strings. If we look at the letters as an octave the notes go in a set pattern. The notes on the guitar always have a definite distance between them. The distance between the notes A and B, C and D, F and G is two frets. All the other notes go from fret to fret.

The fifth string on the guitar sounds the note A so let’s start with that. The open string is A, B is on the second fret, C is on the third fret, D is on the fifth fret, E is on the seventh fret, F is on the eighth fret and G is on the ninth fret. It might be easier to visualize the octave if I write it out as: A BC D E FG. The extra fret always appears between the same notes.

Now that you know the names of the notes on the open strings you can see that the first and the sixth strings both sound the note E, so once you know the notes on the sixth string, you know them on the first string. You could then proceed to find all the E notes on the other strings, and you will be able to identify the notes as they go up the fretboard because you already know the pattern of distances between the notes.

You can make an exercise of finding all the instances of any note on the guitar. You can see how different the notes sound in there various positions because of the different thicknesses of the guitar strings. The notes found in the spaces between A B, C D, D E and E F are sharps and flats which is a whole other area of study. Basically the note above C is C Sharp (written as C#) or D Flat (written as Db). You should be able to do a search on the internet and find a guitar fretboard chart that you can download for free.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

By Ricky Sharples

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Before you get stuck into string skipping and intricate tapping, make sure you have the basics in your fingers. By basics I mean stuff like barre chords. There are two kinds of barre chord: the half barre and the full barre. The half barre does not necessarily only barre three strings – it could be two, three, four or five – it’s just a name. The full barre, however does cover all six strings.

Barre chords are used in all kinds of guitar music and you might be wondering why I have counted it as an advanced technique for lead guitar players. The barre chord is probably the most challenging guitar technique because it asks you to exert some physical force, release that force and then exert the force again. This applying and releasing pressure is controlled by muscle memory after we have practiced barre chords for a while but if we learn how to use patience and repetition in learning how to play barre chords, this experience will help you as you learn more advanced lead guitar techniques.

The key to effective barre chord technique is holding the first finger of your fretting hand straight without allowing it to curve. You place it lightly across the strings and gradually allow it to assume a straight position rather than forcibly making it straight before it even touches the fretboard. The same with finding the amount of pressure you need to use to play a clean barre chord. Just ease the pressure on, allowing yourself to hear the muffled strings as you strum. As your left hand gradually finds the correct amount of force to use, the strings will play clean notes.

So patience and repetition are two qualities that all guitarists, lead guitar players or not, need to develop. There is no guitar technique that cannot be brought to that effortless playing that we all admire when we watch an accomplished guitarist. If you ask a professional guitar player about the boring and tedious kind of practice we need to advance our lead guitar technique he will tell you that all guitarists have faced it and continue to renew their efforts every day.

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

By Ricky Sharples

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It might seem like a chore, but cleaning your guitar can lengthen your guitar’s life by leaps and bounds. Here are some cleaning tips on how to easily and quickly give your guitar’s sparkle and shine back.

* Clean the fret board when you plan to remove the strings.

If you’re looking for time and convenience when you think about how to clean your guitar, then why not do it when you already plan on some routine maintenance? The next time you need to change a string or restring your guitar, use some olive oil and an old rag and wipe down your fret board. You’ll see a beautiful shine when you’re done.

* Use household window and glass cleaners for the guitar body.

If you were to ask how to clean your guitar in a guitar store, the salesperson would probably recommend an expensive cleaning polish. Don’t worry about cleaning polish for your guitar if you don’t want to spend the money.

You can easily get spots and bring out your guitar’s natural shine in the body with some household glass cleaner. Use a few sprays and wipe down with a rag and it will look great.

* Wash your hands each time before playing your guitar.

This tip is more of a preventative measure on how to keep your guitar clean. I can remember getting my guitar strings so filthy only because I forgot to wash my hands after eating chicken wings or pizza. Take a minute or two to wash your hands and you can keep your strings cleaner and your fingers more sanitary.

* Use a small sponge or toothbrush to clean nasty strings and tailpieces.

Your hardware on the guitar is difficult to get really clean if you’ve neglected a cleaning for a long time. Grab an old toothbrush and some glass cleaner once again and work into those tiny crevices. You’ll see a nice shine and less dirt at the bottom of your guitar.

Believe me. I understand just as much as you that cleaning your guitar isn’t that much fun, but I’ve held onto guitars longer than I thought I could just because I kept up on a little simple “spit-shine” every now and again. Keep your guitar in fine working condition and keep it clean.

Are you interested in more fast guitar tips? Check out my guitar blog, How To Guitar Tune.

By Kyle Hoffman

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My first guitar was a borrowed guitar from the music school. At the time I could not hear when a guitar was out of tune but even my totally untrained beginners ears could hear that it was an awful guitar. It sounded dark, flat and ugly and I was embarrassed to bring that to my teacher. Needless to say how frustrated it was to learn to play on it. Despite the guitar I practised every day, my parents saw that I was serious and three months later I had my own guitar, a brand new nylon string classical Yamaha guitar.

Choose your instrument with care.

So how do you go out and buy a good standard guitar without having to spent a ton of money not knowing where the threshold is between a good guitar and one of poor quality? Don’t just go out with a couple hundred dollars choosing a guitar within that budget.

The price of a guitar goes from a hundred dollars to thousands of dollars. Obviously the more expensive the better the guitar but for six to seven hundred dollars you can buy a decent one that goes a long way. It’s is not cheap but far from expensive and it’s worth saving until you have the money because over time a good guitar will become a better guitar while a bad guitar will never be a good one.

What makes a great instrument – Things to look out for.

If you have untrained ears ask someone with experience to go with you. You want to make sure that the guitar doesn’t have invisible damage or issues.

The neck should also fit properly onto the body. When you hold the guitar the way you would play it look at the neck where it is attached to the body. The body has a cutout and the neck should fit exactly into the space. On some guitars the cutout is wider than the neck. You should not be able to fit your bank card into the space between the neck and the body.

Just remember that what you pay less on buying the instrument you’ll pay later in sweat, more practice time and costs to repair and adjust your cheap guitar. For acoustic guitars I can recommend Martin and Taylor and for electric guitars I recommend American made Fender and Gibson.

By June Moris

June Moris has been playing the guitar since she was thirteen. She has been doing research on the use of effects full time for six months. When you hear her live it’s like there are two guitar players on stage. Some people mistake her guitar for a couple synthesizers. June lives in NYC where she plays her music and teaches guitar. Some of her lessons can be found on her website @ http://www.music.junemoris.com

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Allegedly Ringo Starr uttered these words as he tossed his drum sticks across the studio after numerous takes of the Beatles song “Helter Skelter”. Reportedly there is a dispute as to whether it was actually Ringo who said those words on the recording, or if it was John Lennon. One of the arguments is that Ringo, a drummer, was not as likely to develop blisters “on his fingers” as Lennon, a guitar player.

If you are just starting out on guitar, maybe just beginning guitar lessons or even shopping for your first guitar – you are soon to discover the results of pressing virgin flesh to metal…Ouch!

Hold on – don’t run off just yet! Things will get better, I promise.

If you’ve ever spent an afternoon in the yard raking leaves for a couple of hours, you probably walked away with a couple of blisters on your hands. Painful battle scars for your efforts.

But if, on the other hand, you raked leaves for a living, and did it every day, eventually those blisters would turn into hardened calluses, and you wouldn’t even notice the feel of the wooden handle in your hands.

Guitar playing is very much the same. In the beginning you are exposing the soft flesh of the finger tips to the harshness of metal guitar strings. It stands to reason that, before too long, this abrasive abuse is going to result in some pain!

But rest assured that this is something we all go through in the beginning stages of playing guitar. There is just no way around it – but it is temporary.

Many of my beginning guitar students ask what can be done about it. I know they want some sort of “magic bullet” answer – some insightful words of wisdom that will provide an easy fix.

And although I am sympathetic to their plight, the truth is, there is no easy way around sore fingers in the beginning days of playing guitar.

The only real way to solve the problem of sore fingers is, quite simply, to play guitar! The more you play, the faster your finger tips will harden with calluses, and eventually you won’t even feel the strings beneath your fingers.

Moderation is the key in the beginning. You shouldn’t suffer with agony, and when it gets bad, put the guitar down and take a break.

But by spending a little time each day, even just 20 minutes or so, you will find that your blisters (and the pain) will be gone before you know it!

For Free Video Guitar Lessons designed for Active Adults go to http://www.adultguitarlessons.com/amember/free_lessons_ez800.php

Keith Dean is founder of AdultGuitarLessons.com and a 30 veteran of stage and studio. He toured extensively as a road musician throughout the US and Europe, was a former lead guitarist for Jason Aldean, and has shared stages with Little Big Town, Wild Rose, Winger, Confederate Railroad and more. He is a published songwriter, owned and operated a successful music store, and has instructed numerous students in guitar. He is a Platinum Level Expert Author on Ezine Articles.

By Keith Dean

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Keith_Dean
http://EzineArticles.com/?Got-Blisters?-The-Painful-Side-of-Learning-Guitar&id=2506883

You’ve probably heard of tabs before, and maybe you’ve tried already to learn them but have just gotten frustrated. Like anything else, tabs can be a really challenging to learn if you don’t have a teacher who is really good. You can struggle along and maybe learn some basic principles of playing gutiar, but you’ll probably hit a plateau and be unable to excel beyond that point. Maybe you’ve already hit that plateau; if you have, some easy acoustic guitar tabs may be able to help you.

If you walk into your local music school and sign up for studio lessons, you will probably find out very quickly how expensive that can be. After just a few lessons, you will spend much more than you probably expected. The truth is, there’s no real reason to spend all that money. You can easily get online and find a lot of information on easy acoustic guitar tabs. There’s even a few complete programs that are really good, and which are certainly much cheaper than a traditional music academy.

Tabs are much easier to learn than classic staff notation. They use diagrams of your fretboard, and you just put your fingers on the frets indicated in the picture. After some basic lessons, you will be rapidly on your way to playing the guitar. With some easy acoustic guitar tabs, you can start a band, play for your kids or just learn for yourself!

Learn Easy Acoustic Guitar Tabs

About Acoustic Guitar Tabs

By Lia March

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If you are willing to put in the time to practice and don’t mind getting calluses, you can learn to play the guitar. That’s right YOU! I’m going to inform you of the basics that every guitar player needs to get you on the right path.

First thing’s first…you need a guitar! There are four main parts of the guitar. Let’s go through some to get you started.

HEADSTOCK
The head is found at the edge of the guitar. It is used for adjusting the pitch of the guitar. The headstock is where all of the tuning pegs are contained.

NECK
The guitar neck’s is where a lot of the guitar parts are located. The fretboard, frets, tuners, headstock, etc. are housed on a long wooden panel.

FRETBOARD
The fretboard is the bread and butter of the guitar. It is where you will strum your little heart away. It is made up of hardwood and lies on the neck of the guitar. The fretboard can also be called the fingerboard.

BODY
The body of the guitar is a big factor in determining the overall sound that is produced. There are four parts of the body of the guitar. The four parts are the upper bout, bridge pins, sound hole, and the bridge.

You are now armed with the basics of the guitar. Now it’s up to you to go out and strum your life away!

Learn to play like Pink Floyd, Nirvana, Guns ‘N Roses, and Green Day at Best Guitar Course.

By Ashley Norton

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